Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said U.S.
public education systems should extend the school year and weed
out the worst-performing teachers because the future of the
nation’s economy depends on a more educated workforce.

Students in the U.S. spend “about a month less” in school
than in other advanced countries, and that time “makes a
difference,” Obama said in an interview on NBC’s “Today”
show.

“That means that kids are losing a lot of what they learn
during the school year during the summer,” he said. The extra
cost of extending the school year would be “money well spent.”

Obama is promoting his education initiatives, including the
“Race to the Top” grant program and a new goal of recruiting
10,000 science, technology, engineering and math teachers over
the next two years. As he has in the past, Obama said the nation
is falling behind in math and science education and that is
hurting U.S. economic competitiveness.

While public education is primarily funded and run by state
and local authorities in the U.S., Obama is pushing for broad
adoption of standards for both teachers and students to achieve
his goal of having the highest rate of college graduates in the
world by 2020. The U.S. now ranks 12th among 36 developed
nations, the College Board said in a report in July.

Overhauling Standard

“Money, without reform, will not fix the problem,” he
said. The president voiced support for overhauling performance
standards, including firing teachers who fall short.

“We’ve got to be able to indentify teachers who are doing
well, teachers who are not doing well,” he said. “Ultimately
if some teachers aren’t doing a good job, they’ve got to go.”

Obama’s daughters, Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9, attend the
private Sidwell Friends School in the Washington area. He said
they wouldn’t be able to get as good an education in the city’s
“struggling” public schools even though the Washington school
system has made strides “in the direction of reform.”

The president’s Race to the Top program, funded with $4.35
billion, is meant to improve U.S. education by raising state
standards and linking teacher pay to student achievement.

“We’ve got to raise teacher pay generally,” he said, to
ensure that teachers can afford to stay in teaching.

“The problem is that typically, after two or three years,
they drop out of teaching,” he said. Sometimes “they don’t
feel they’re getting enough support” from local school
districts.

Slow Recovery

On the economy generally, Obama repeated that he
understands the public is frustrated with the pace of the
recovery and continuing high unemployment, which was 9.6 percent
last month.

“The problem is we just lost so many jobs” during the
recession, he said. The recession began in December 2007 and
ended in June 2009, making it the longest since the 1930s. The
losses mean the U.S. has “a bigger hole to fill” in reducing
unemployment.

He also said his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, hasn’t told
him whether he plans to run for mayor of Chicago.

Emanuel may leave the administration before the November
congressional elections to run for the top job in his hometown,
people familiar with the matter said last week. The last day to
file paperwork for a bid is Nov. 22.

Emanuel “will have to make a decision quickly because
running for mayor of Chicago is a serious enterprise,” Obama
said.